Supportive Care
by RadioShack84
Summary: His mother and the other patients from the hotel would survive. His father had apologized. All was well, except for the small fact that Dr. Neal Hudson was a human being who no longer had it in him to pretend that he was okay. Post-ep for 1x05 "Doctors With Borders".


Disclaimer: I don't own Code Black or the characters. Written for enjoyment, not money.

* * *

Dr. Peter Hudson was a meticulous man. He always had been. It was a hazard of being a neurosurgeon, Neal supposed. Or of being English. Or both. Whatever the case, that particular aspect of his father's nature was ever-present - personal life or professional, it made no difference. His every action and response was measured, tailored to fit his definition of the world just so. The very quality that made him brilliant clinically also meant that Neal could count on one hand the occasions in his adult life that he'd had an affectionate exchange with his father consisting of more than a handshake or a brief pat on the shoulder.

Most of the time he didn't mind. He was a grown man, and he felt that he understood his father better than most. He knew the nuances of his father's behavior and what would be tolerated - when he could tell the man off and get away with it, for instance, or when his father would rather accept a firmly-stated case of why he was wrong than a sincere apology for having told him so. Tonight, though, standing at the doorway of his mother's room in the ICU, the younger Dr. Hudson observed few of those familiar traits. His father's carefully-calculated, complex barriers had collapsed beneath the weight of an excessively-trying day, leaving him more open than Neal had seen him in years.

Even so, the rare praise and apology that issued forth from the older man's lips greatly surprised him and chiseled away at what little was left of _his_ emotional fortitude, until Neal was compelled to make a careful calculation of his own regarding his father's tolerance. In the space of a quip about being American, he closed the gap between them, embracing his father tightly. He felt the other man still in surprise, before an uncomfortable laugh escaped him and his arms tentatively returned the gesture. Needing it even more than he'd initially realized, Neal held on until the last possible moment - when the lump rising in his throat threatened to expand into his eyes and send tears spilling forth, when his father was only holding on because he didn't know how to object with propriety. At that point Neal let go, straightened his posture, cleared his throat, nodded once at his father, and left the room quickly without looking at his sleeping mother, lest the tears come after all.

By the time he reached the next ICU bay, he had reined in his emotions sufficiently - on the surface at least - that the nurse checking his patient's vitals didn't seem to notice that anything was amiss. It turned out to be the best Neal could manage, though: minimal quiet speech and glassy eyes as he interacted with patients and colleagues, until some time later he came upon an empty room at the far end of the ward. It signaled both the end of his rounds and his control. He slid the glass door closed behind him and stood still for just a moment, taking in the almost unnatural silence of a room containing no critical patient, before he made straight for the waste bin in the corner and retched violently.

* * *

Dr. Rorish felt only a little of the tension from the shift begin to ease out of her as she watched Jesse hand Mr. Gable his cell phone for his long-awaited and hard-won conversation with his daughter. It truly was a miracle that the man was still alive with all of the setbacks he'd experienced over the last several hours, Leanne reflected, as images of her own family surfaced unbidden in her mind's eye. Unlike Gable, their struggles had ultimately been futile, and they'd succumbed to the multitude of injuries they'd sustained in the accident. She held back a sigh, feeling a twinge of pain from her long-healed broken ribs, and forced the memories of their battered bodies away as Jesse rejoined her in the hallway and they slid the door closed to give Gable some privacy.

This was the only vindication left to her: preventing other families from experiencing what she had by saving their loved ones. It wasn't always enough, though. Truthfully, it seldom was, and she commented sadly to Jesse that she'd often dreamed of receiving a call like the one Gable was currently enjoying. Her friend offered her his usual brand of sympathy: quiet dark eyes and a hand on her shoulder, followed shortly by an insult with no heat behind it.

She played along, sniping back at him as they made their way down the deserted 3 a.m. hallway. They had nearly reached the boundary of the ICU ward when motion in her peripheral vision drew her attention. The bed in the unlit room to her right was astonishingly unoccupied, but someone clad in doctor's scrubs was moving through the shadows. After a moment she recognized the tall figure as Neal, and she slowed her steps, wincing when she saw him go for the trash can.

"Hey, Daddy, you're makin' _my_ daddy look like a marathon runner over there."

Leanne frowned and shot Jesse a sideways glance. "Hang back a minute, Mama."

Jesse's expression grew serious at her tone and he turned to face her. "What is it?"

Rorish didn't answer. Neal had straightened from his bout of nausea, and she was debating whether to go to him when she saw him sway and grab onto the wall to catch his balance. It was a bit difficult to make out his face in the darkness, but Leanne had seen The Look enough times under every lighting condition that she gave up on indecision and lunged for the door, getting her shoulder under Neal's arm just as his knees buckled.

"Easy, I've got you," Rorish murmured, quickly wrapping her arm around his waist. He wasn't completely out, but was still leaning heavily on her and she staggered half a step backward, grateful when Jesse appeared on Neal's other side and helped her guide him to a chair. The nurse already had his hand on Neal's left wrist, but she mirrored the action, grabbing his right and then reaching for her stethoscope at feeling the frantic beat beneath her fingers.

"Pulse 130," Jesse reported automatically.

"Rhythm normal...resps a bit shallow," she answered after several seconds, releasing the breath she'd been holding. "Neal, can you hear me?"

She received a slight nod in response. "Really dizzy," he whispered, bending forward to lean his head down over his knees.

"That much I gathered. Take deeper breaths if you can," she instructed, resting her hand on his back and stooping down next to him. He didn't answer, but she felt him attempt to slow his breathing. He was trembling faintly. "Are you still nauseous?" she asked after he'd calmed somewhat.

"Yeah," he breathed.

"When did that start?"

"Just now, before you came in." Neal tried to sit up enough to look at her, but his vision swam and he felt himself tilt sharply to the side. He grabbed at the edge of the chair and missed. Fortunately, Jesse was prepared and caught his shoulders, preventing him from falling. The nurse's hand joined Leanne's on his back and he was gently forced back down.

"Stay put for a few minutes," Jesse admonished. He carefully let go of Neal, grabbed a blood pressure cuff from the basket on the wall, and wrapped it around the ailing doctor's arm. "83 over 60, pulse still 120," he replied to Leanne's unspoken question when the cuff deflated.

"When was the last time you had anything to eat?" she asked Neal.

"No idea."

Rorish switched on a lamp and stepped over to peer into the wastebasket. "At least eight hours from the look of it. What about water?" She looked up when there was no answer. "Neal?"

"Dr. Hudson, are you with us?" Jesse asked, shaking Neal's shoulder. After a few moments, he glanced at Rorish and shook his head. "He's out."

"Damn," Leanne sighed, sharing a look of concern with the nurse as she returned to Neal's side.

"Fluids and a gurney?"

Rorish nodded. "Go, I'll stay with him."

"Back in three," Jesse replied, already heading for the door.

He'd been gone at most twenty seconds when Neal stirred. "'s not necessary," Hudson mumbled.

Rorish frowned. "If you're being serious about that, you're worse off than I thought."

Very slowly Neal lifted his head and sat up halfway, bracing his elbows on his knees. "It's not necessary for my father to find out about this," he clarified, "which is what will happen if I take a ride out of here on a gurney."

Leanne's expression softened from incredulous to understanding. "Your parents were both asleep when I passed your mother's room five minutes ago, so I don't think you have to worry."

"That doesn't matter," Neal argued. "Someone will notice. Everyone is on high alert right now with the respiratory patients, and my father's a light sleeper. He'll hear the nurses discussing the doctor that collapsed and ply them for details. Then he'll be worried, but won't admit to it by trying to call me, so instead he'll start acting oddly, wringing his hands and whatnot. My mother knows all of his tells, and she can get anything out of him in ten seconds flat. She _will_ try to call me, and she should be resting, and -"

"So should you," Rorish said, giving him a pointed look and cutting off his rapid-fire monologue.

Neal sighed and his speech slowed somewhat, but he continued on without otherwise acknowledging the comment, "He actually thanked me, you know. For saving her. As if I wouldn't have done everything in my power. The hell of it is that if it had gone the other way, I know he'd have blamed me instead. I'd have lost them both."

He said it matter-of-factly, but Leanne didn't miss the increased paleness in his complexion as he did. She moved a little closer to him, just in case, and shook her head in response, even though he wasn't looking at her. "Maybe that's what got her through."

"I don't understand."

Rorish shrugged. "Something I said to Jesse earlier, about unfinished business being enough to see a person through. Maybe keeping your family together and strong was the motivation your mother needed to keep fighting."

Her words were rewarded with a weak smile, but Neal didn't comment further, and she resorted to glancing at him from time to time to make sure that he remained conscious.

"12 hours."

Rorish blinked at the non sequitur. "Now I don't understand," she said.

"In answer to your earlier question. It's been over 12 hours since I had anything to drink, other than that cup of coffee," he said, looking up from his wristwatch and gesturing vaguely toward the wastebasket. "There just wasn't time."

Leanne's eyebrows lifted. "I was pretty sure you'd checked out without hearing my question."

Neal smirked. "I'm full of surprises. Just ask my father."

"It's surprising you've held up this long if you've been running on empty all night, I'll give you that."

"How's he doing?" Jesse asked from the doorway, having overheard their last bit of conversation as he returned.

Leanne looked up. "Dehydrated and exhausted, but I think he'll live."

" _He's_ right here and can hear you," Neal pointed out.

"That's good. You're much easier to transport when you're fully-conscious," Jesse smiled.

Neal gave him an unimpressed look and eyed the gurney that the nurse had wheeled into the room. "What about my parents?" he asked Rorish. "I wasn't joking before."

"I know you weren't," Leanne said seriously. "Let me worry about them."

Neal held her eyes a moment longer before nodding. The motion served to aggravate the dizziness, though, and he rested his face in his hands, waiting for it to pass. It must have taken a little too long because when he finally risked raising his head, both Jesse and Rorish were studying him and frowning. "What?" he said.

The nurse shrugged. "Just wondering if you're planning on spending the rest of the night in that chair."

Neal looked like he was actually considering it, and Rorish rolled her eyes. "The answer to that is _no_ , by the way," she informed him.

"Do you think you can stand up if we help you?" added Jesse.

"I'm dehydrated, not drunk," Neal groused, but he knew as they did that the result might well be the same and so he accepted their support, Jesse holding onto his left elbow and Leanne his right as he shifted his weight forward.

That was when he discovered that dehydrated was much worse than drunk. His knees started to fold before he could even get them locked, and the room suddenly sucked inward and spun end over end around him. Somehow he still made it onto the edge of the gurney, but it was through no fault of his own. He'd squeezed his eyes closed against the vertigo and, at present, hardly knew which way way was up. He wasn't given a chance to figure it out, either. Leanne took his shoulders and Jesse his legs (he guessed at who was who from the proximity of their voices), and the world flipped a few more times as they eased him down flat.

Neal sighed in relief when they finally let him be, but the sound that came out was closer to a moan as his stomach reminded him that it was still present and still unhappy despite his newly-stationary state. He swallowed hard and willed himself not to throw up, fearing that he'd pass out again if he did.

"Try to breathe through it," Leanne's voice encouraged. "We'll have you upstairs in a few minutes and they'll give you something to help with the nausea until the fluids kick in."

Neal thought that he nodded in response, but he was too lightheaded to know for sure. Distantly, he felt the sharp sting of an IV needle sliding into his arm, followed shortly by warmth when Rorish drew a blanket up to his shoulders. As if a switch had been flipped, he finally relaxed, giving in to the aching weariness that had overtaken his body.

He wasn't sure how long he dozed before the motion of the gurney woke him, but his sluggish mind began nagging at him with the idea that he was forgetting something important, preventing him from slipping back into sleep. "Wait," he finally found the energy to mumble, and lifted his head off the pillow, opening his eyes.

It was the wrong move. Chaos immediately assaulted his vision, and he was unable to differentiate actual motion from dizziness. Blinking rapidly didn't help, and he found he couldn't remember why he'd thought any of this a good idea in the first place. All he knew was that one name kept making its way through the haze. "Mum!" he called out, blindly pushing up further onto his elbows.

The half of the motion being caused by the gurney came to a stop and Jesse's blurred and shifting form appeared next to him. "Dr. Hudson, what's wrong?" the nurse asked, frowning in concern at his patient's panicked expression. Neal's breathing had turned ragged, his eyes were unfocused and clouded with confusion, and his arms were shaking so much that Jesse was surprised they were holding any of his weight. He tried again, "Neal. Talk to me."

"Mum...she was…is she...?" Hudson asked anxiously.

Despite the vague question, Jesse nodded in comprehension. "Your mother is doing fine," he reassured, squeezing Neal's shoulder. "Your father is with her. She's going to be all right." For a moment, he wasn't sure that Neal had heard him, but then the tension abruptly drained out of the younger man and his eyes slid halfway closed in relief.

"Good," he mumbled. "That's good."

"Very," Jesse agreed. "You, on the other hand, are not in the best shape. Leanne wants you under observation for a few hours. She's gone to run interference with your father as promised while I take you upstairs, okay?"

"All right," Hudson conceded, but continued to stare down the hallway in a daze, his arms trembling even more than before. The nurse took that as his cue and slipped an arm behind Neal's shoulders, helping him lie down before his strength could give out completely.

"Thanks, Mum."

Jesse paused at the soft-spoken comment. Neal's eyes were closed, and he couldn't gauge whether the words were a product of the exhaustion or a deliberate return to the loathed revision of his nickname that the doctor had teasingly coined during his resident days. Jesse decided that, just this once, he didn't mind either way. "You did good today, Dr. Hudson," he said fondly. "Get some rest now."

Silence answered him, and the nurse sighed, patting Neal's arm. He'd been at Angels Memorial too long to think of tonight as anything extraordinary, but it had pushed everyone a little harder than necessary - especially the sleeping man in front of him. Neal had worked tirelessly tonight, as he always did, for the good of his patients. Those he'd lost had been unavoidable as far as Jesse was concerned. Tragic, yes, but the odds weren't with them that they would have survived had they been in a different ER, either. For Neal's own father to not appreciate that…

Jesse shook his head. He was just glad that he and Leanne had been able to offer Neal their assistance when it counted after being barred from aiding in the crisis for so many hours by walls of plastic. It wasn't as though they'd sat idle - Mr. Gable had certainly been in need of their services - but the nurse didn't like the feeling of being stuck on the sidelines when he knew he could be doing more.

He looked down as Hudson stirred briefly, then settled again, his breathing deepening. Hand still on the doctor's arm, Jesse shifted it slightly to his wrist. Pulse down to 105. He nodded to himself in satisfaction. For Neal, at least, he was confident he had done all he could - physically, anyway. The rest would take time, but, thanks in large part to the doctor himself, that was something that he and his parents now had. Jesse smiled at the thought, and began to guide Neal's bed once again toward the elevators.


End file.
